FIRE IN THE MOUNTAINS 2025: THE DAWN OF A NEW AGE OF HEAVY CEREMONY

 Concert Reviews  12 Responses »
Aug 072025
 

(Denver-based NCS writer Gonzo prepared the following extensive report on this year’s edition of the Fire in the Mountains festival. All photos except where noted by Jacob Juno.)

Like more than a few who will read this, the experience of the 2022 Fire in the Mountains festival left an indelible mark on me. That July weekend in the Tetons, now over three years in the rearview mirror, gave more than just a weekend of music in the wilderness to everyone in attendance. It took what easily could’ve been a risky one-off experiment and turned it into something decidedly different. Its success can be measured entirely by the community it built over those three unforgettable days.

Some of it was the incredible lineup, which included Enslaved, YOB, Wolves in the Throne Room, Wayfarer, and many others. Still more of it was the beautiful setting just outside Grand Teton National Park. But so much beyond that felt intangible, as if any human tongue lacked the words necessary to describe how it felt to be there.

I thought about all of this as I finished packing up my Subaru to the brim with camping gear two weeks ago. The wait was over. After three long years of uncertainty, the Fire in the Mountains festival would finally be making its triumphant return in a new place, rife with the potential for new beginnings.

And even though I didn’t know it at the time, the 2025 edition of this festival would not only obliterate every expectation I had for it, but it would signal the dawn of a new kind of heavy ceremony, paving the way for yet another weekend for which I’d struggle to find the words to describe.

The following recap is me trying anyway. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A WEDNESDAY: HOODED MENACE, MORS PRINCIPIUM EST, GORYCZ, ORBIT CULTURE, LOWBAU, ASHEN

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  3 Responses »
Aug 062025
 


Hooded Menace photo by Pasi Nevalaita

(written by Islander)

Today is another rare day when we have no premieres on our daily calendar, and we only had one on Monday and one on Tuesday. This seems to be just a brief ebb. Next week we have either two track premieres or an album premiere slated for every day. Other premieres are already scattered across the calendar through the rest of August and into September.

But in light of this week’s ebb, I used the free time to pull together the following mid-week roundup of recommended new songs and videos. This one might lean into a greater share of bigger names than usual, but I have also sling-shot a few into the mix that will even out the notoriety scale. Continue reading »

BAEST – COLOSSAL

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Aug 052025
 

(Andy Synn has always been Baest‘s biggest cheerleader here at NCS, and that’s not about to change)

As the dude who’s been singing the praises of Danish death-dealers Baest (or Bæst, as I still prefer to call them) for a long time now, and who believes that they deserve just as much hype and attention as the Tomb Molds and Blood Incantations of the world, it was only natural for me to be the one to cover their upcoming fourth album (set for release 15 August on Century Media).

But, I must admit – having purposefully avoided all the pre-release singles so that I could experience (and, hopefully, enjoy) the whole record in one go – my first encounter with Colossal wasn’t quite what I expected.

Because it was way more… whisper it… fun than I ever would have imagined.

Continue reading »

AN NCS VIDEO PREMIERE: MATT MILLER — “EFFECTIVELY NEUTRALIZED”

 Premieres  2 Responses »
Aug 052025
 

(written by Islander)

Whiz-bang can only carry an extreme metal guitarist so far, especially in a modern era marked by what one of our writers is prone to call the “tech death nuclear arms race,” in which blistering speed and near-inhuman dexterity have become main marks of competition, often leaving actual songwriting melted in the wake of the blast fronts.

And that brings us to the subject of Oregonian Matt Miller. He has earned a reputation as a death metal shredder par excellence, on top of his reputation as an award-winning producer and engineer. He built that reputation in part through a flurry of solo instrumental albums and EPs released from 2021 to 2023.

But with his new album Fiber Tormentum, forthcoming from Exitus Stratagem Records in September, it is entirely fair to say that Miller has reached a pivotal moment in his musical evolution, with new ambitions made evident and new stylistic ingredients impressively melded together. We have vivid signs of this in the song from Fiber Tormentum we’re presenting today through a video premiere. Continue reading »

THINGS YOU MAY HAVE MISSED (BUT SHOULDN’T)

 Album Reviews  1 Response »
Aug 042025
 

(Andy Synn has four more recommendations from last month which you might have overlooked)

For the most part, when putting together these “Things You May Have Missed” articles, I try to cover as varied an array of artists and albums as one possibly can when they’ve limited themselves (to preserve their own sanity) to just four records.

But, as it happens, the four records I’ve chosen to highlight here today – a succulent slab of gnarly, narcotic Sludge, a harrowing howl of soul-scarring Black Metal, a prime cut of prodigiously proggy Death Metal, and an unexpectedly ambitious (if flawed) attempt at combining the metallic and the metaphysical – all have at least two things in common.

One, they’re all from bands with one-word names and, two, they all hail from the good ol’ US of A.

Continue reading »

AN NCS PREMIERE: IN CORPORE MORTIS — “IGNEOUS CURRENTS PERVADE THE AETHYR”

 Premieres  1 Response »
Aug 042025
 

(written by Islander)

Twelve years after their full-length debut Neverwards, and five years following their Eons of Attrition EP, the Italian black metal band In Corpore Mortis are returning with a second album named Umbræ Ignis that’s now scheduled for co-release next month by Satanath Records and Wine and Fog Productions.

One song from the new album has already debuted, and today we’re premiering a second one. Both of them are representations of supernatural evil, both of them insidiously infectious as well as frightening, and they both reveal other facets of chilling mood, including shades of ghostly gothic horror. Continue reading »

AN NCS INTERVIEW: NORILSK

 Interviews  No Responses »
Aug 042025
 

(We present Comrade Aleks‘ interview of Nicolas Miquelon from the Canadian band Norilsk, whose new album Antipole is out now on Hypnotic Dirge Records, accompanied by photos credited to Nick Richer.)

Canadian Norilsk was deliberately named by the band’s ideologist Nicolas Miquelon in honor of the most densely populated city beyond the Arctic Circle. Nicolas, who is familiar with Russian culture firsthand, wanted the name to reflect the harshness of the North. Norilsk initially embodied this idea in death-doom, but over time they enriched the musical landscape with elements of sludge and post-metal.

Let’s take the title track of their new album Antipole: it seems to obtain the spirit of ’90s death-doom, but Norilsk go beyond it, avoiding to step too far into well-known post-metal territory at the same time. “Antipole” is atmospheric doom metal, but there is something strange, atypical, and at the same time naturally revealing the essence of the genre. In “D’ombre et de glace (l’asphyxie)” Norilsk progress further: there is a lot of growling, a lot of thematic transitions.

But “Locus Sanctus” shows that this is not the limit: the rolling riffs are preceded by a dark acoustic intro with clean declamation, and Nicolas continues the story further, replacing the whisper with a growl. Solemn, upset riff cycles alternate with solo guitar interludes and acoustic themes, until a melody of a cosmic scale bursts into the narrative. The aggressive contrast of “Nunataks” seems unusual for Norilsk, but the name comes to the rescue here. “Nunatak” is a rocky peak surrounded by ice in the language of the Inuit, and the stubborn, rebellious melody justifies the name. It helps to get through the death-doom hummocks and the pumping mid-tempo post-doom hit “La fonte”; Norilsk know how to surprise.

Everything ends, however, with the dirge “Un chant pour les morts”, nothing can be done about it – “a song for the dead”. Not everything is clear about the album, and as a good tradition – I offer you this interview with Nicolas Miquelon, another good chat about good music. Continue reading »

SHADES OF BLACK: ARA SUBVERSOR, FØSPHENE, KORELTSAK, NON SERVIAM, VOLLOÍOM

 Album Reviews, SHADES OF BLACK, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Aug 032025
 

(written by Islander)

I have bit off more than I can chew. All five of today’s picks are complete albums or EPs. I have listened to a couple of them a couple of times and others only once. A good reviewer would only write about one or two of them, and do so thoroughly and after considered reflection. You’ll have to go elsewhere for that kind of coherent professionalism. Here, you’ll just find a dude jumping up and down, waving his arms and yelling “Listen to this!”

I put them in alphabetical order by band name because I couldn’t figure out a better way to arrange them as step-wise progressions of sound, and because my brain was already overloaded by what I bit off. Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A SATURDAY: PESTILENGTH, HYPERDONTIA, RIBSPREADER, MALEVICH, SARNATH ETERNAL

 Album Reviews, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC, SHORT BUT SWEET  No Responses »
Aug 022025
 

(written by Islander)

I’m going to get right to the music today and dispense with the usual personal anecdotes that no one really wants to read, like whether I had to clean up cat vomit this morning (I did), if I’ve learned to make washing dishes by hand a Zen-like experience since the dishwasher broke (nope), the best thing I’ve seen and heard outside the house this week (the pair of hawks that have re-located into the forest and apparently scared all the other fowl into silence), how much I’ve enjoyed beautiful mild PNW days while reading about much of the country getting brutally microwaved (a lot), the only new item I read this morning that didn’t make me furious and/or nauseated (about an anti-poaching campaign in South Africa that involves injecting the horns of rhinos with radioactive isotopes), and my opinion on the rendition of “Paranoid” by the Kings’ Guards at Buckingham Palace (meh).

So yeah, none of that irrelevant personal stuff, getting right to the music, right away, no delays: Continue reading »

SEEN AND HEARD ON A FRIDAY: RUNEMAGICK, NEW WORLD DEPRESSION, INNUMERABLE FORMS, TITHE, CANCER VOID, SUM OF R

 Exceptions to the Rule, Metal News, RANDOM FUCKING MUSIC  No Responses »
Aug 012025
 

(written by Islander)

Today is another Bandcamp Friday, a good time to buy or pre-order music because a greater percentage of the proceeds will reach bands and labels. I had a few hours to myself yesterday afternoon and this morning that I spent surveying new music that’s come out over the last week or so. From that, I picked music from six bands to recommend today.

With one exception, all these songs are advance tracks from albums that will be released either later this month or in September or October. The one exception is the first single from an album that’s being released in full today. There’s a hell of a lot of great cover art in today’s collection too.

If things go as planned, I’ll have more recommendations in the usual space for these roundups tomorrow. Continue reading »

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